CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
September 2008, Vol. 50, No. 8
In his early-days-of-television quiz show, “You Bet Your Life,” comedian and game-show host Groucho Marx used to tell contestants, “Say the secret word and you'll win one-hundred dollars.” When a guest just happened to say the secret word, a duck that looked remarkably like Groucho would drop down from the ceiling with the cash.The subtitle of Beverly Browning's book promises to provide you with “Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases to Present Your Organization, Explain Your Cause, and Get the Funding You Need.” However, Dr. Browning knows that it takes much more than accidentally saying the right words in order to coax funding from foundations and other grant-making bodies. It takes planning and conscious effort. She tells us how to give the funding source the information it needs in order to respond positively to our requests.
If you are looking for “secret words” that will guarantee funding of your grant proposals, you will not find them here. None of Browning's terminology will cause you to sit up and think, “Now, why didn't I think of that?” In fact, you may have already used some of Dr. Brownings phrases in grant requests that you have worked on.
Still, there is much value in this slim volume, value of at least two types. First, Perfect Phrases for Writing Grant Proposals is valuable in the same way that a thesaurus is. When we are at a loss for the right word, we turn to a thesaurus to help us recall terms with which we are already familiar. Such is the case with Perfect Phrases. Someone stuck for a word or sentence while working on a grant proposal can consult the relevant section of this book and borrow some of its phraseology. Probably, most of us do something similar when we haul out an old grant or budget request because we need a little help with the drafting of a new document.
Dr. Browning's book is valuable in a second, and more important, way. Her book offers excellent advice on how to structure your grant request and on what types of information to include in it. Despite the varieties of formats that we encounter in applying for grants, the author identifies the basic components that we can expect to find in most applications.
The first of these components is an introduction to your organization, including a description of its accomplishments. You then move on to your programs and activities in order to demonstrate what types of things you are doing well. Next comes a description of your target population. This section must provide demographics, but it should also explain how members of this target audience are stakeholders in the project. Show how their input has been considered in your planning. It is then time to discuss your community, your partner organizations, and their roles in the project.
In the next section, you will start describing the project itself. State the need. Support it with statistics and financial information, but do not shrink from getting a little emotional about the importance of meeting the needs your project will address. Move on to a clear and direct description of the project and how closely it fits into your organization's mission. You will now define your project's overall goals and its specific, measurable, and realistic objectives. Add a time line for accomplishing those objectives. It is a good idea, if not a requirement, to tell the funding source who will be working on the project, their qualifications, and their project responsibilities. Wrap things up with your plan on how to evaluate the project. Restate the objectives, explain who will do the evaluation, state your methods for collecting data, and describe your reporting procedures.
If you are writing your first grant request, you will find Perfect Phrases invaluable. The book breaks down what you should include in your request and suggests ways to express that content. If you are an experienced grant-writer, it may cause you to reconsider how you express what you put into your proposals. There is room for both hard data and emotion in that grant application! Following the advice you find in Perfect Phrases will not guarantee that your next grant request will be funded, but it should mean that your request will be better organized and worded to attract the serious consideration of the funding body.
There are several titles in the Perfect Phrases series. I recently checked out Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews. Like Browning, authors Douglas Max and Robert Bacal pack a lot of information and advice into a small package. Ironically, even without the phrases, both books were worth reading.
When you submit your grant application or conduct that performance review, I'm sure the authors would advise against using the imperfect phrase, “Tell 'em Groucho sent you!”
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